We now return to our regularly scheduled infertility

It was nice while it lasted.

By "it" I mean both our beach vacation and our summer of no infertility treatments while I waited for DHEA to work its magic.  The parallels of this aren't lost on me.  I'm looking forward to being back in the office about as much as I'm looking forward to daily injections, blood draws, and transvaginal ultrasounds.  Which is to say, not at all.  

We had a lovely time in Maine.  M's parents have been taking M and his brother there for annual vacations since they were little, and it's become a trip rich in tradition.  They stay at the same cottage, eat at the same restaurants, visit the same shopping destinations, and even sit in the same spot on the beach year after year.  Far from being boring, it's the ultimate in relaxation and easy to see why they return there every summer.  This was my fourth time joining them, and I'm sure we'll keep going as often as we can manage.  The one thing that makes me sad is that it's becoming increasingly unlikely that we'll be able to contribute grandchildren and thus continue the family tradition for a new generation.

M's parents have a couple of friends whose families also vacation at the same beach at the same time every year.  And it seems that every year there is another child added into the mix.  I have to assume that M's mom has told her friends about our difficulties, since questions about our own plans to have kids are conspicuously absent.  In a way I'm thankful, and in another it feels like everyone's given up hope and hence just doesn't talk about it any more.  Although I did get a whispered "good luck" during a hug goodbye from one of their friends after dinner one night.  Maybe it was just a general comment, but it didn't feel like it.

In case you can't tell from my tone, I don't have a whole lot of hope for this IVF cycle.  While I've never been one of those people who was certain IVF would work, I definitely feel like I went into our first two cycles with much more optimism than I have now.  This time, it feels more like a formality.  Like we have to do this so that we can say we tried.  Like we're waiting for it to fail so we can put another nail in our fertility coffin and move on.  It wasn't always like this.  I was originally looking forward to this cycle with guarded optimism, hoping that four months of DHEA would make a difference to my egg quality.  But after the results of my endometrial function test, I feel like the wind's been taken out of my sails.  Or someone slashed them.  Or stole them entirely.  And there's a hole in the boat and we're just waiting to sink.  Slowly.

If there was one word to sum up how I feel about IVF #3 it would be dread.  I dread the outcome of this cycle because if it's bad, I don't think I'll have it in me to do this anymore.  Which will mean it's all over.

So where are we now?  I had a 27-day cycle last month and AF arrived last Tuesday.  On CD3 we drove into Portland for bloodwork, and yesterday (CD6) I had more bloodwork and an ultrasound upon our return to Toronto.  We still haven't received the results of my Day 3 bloodwork, and if it shows a super-high FSH (which I've never had, but there's a first time for everything) we'll likely be told to give this month a pass and try again in September.  But for now we're planning to move forward.  I'm to go for regular monitoring until we can confirm ovulation, a week after which I start estrogen priming with Estrace.  Not sure of the schedule after that.

Let's just get this over with.